Drama 16 Stage Lighting

“You see, I like to be invisible. I don’t want people to know that I’m there taking their picture, because knowing you’re being photographed changes you. That’s a false image, so I like to take portraits where people don’t know I’m there, and that portrait of Joni is a perfect example of that.”

-Graham Nash, 1969,  http://bigread.mojo4music.com/2013/10/graham-nash/

This is one of my favorite photographs ever taken. Graham Nash took this picture of Joni Mitchell through the hole in the back of a kitchen chair. The privacy of this photo is so mesmerizing to me. Joni is listening to her album Clouds for the first time, and you can see how personal the moment that she’s experiencing is. I love the contrast between the dark backside of the chair (what the photographer sees) and the light hitting Joni’s magnificent cheekbones — there’s a dramatic irony in this picture, she’s only aware of her part of the picture, the light.

This photo is surreal to me because of the interesting way the photo is lit. You can clearly see the undersides of the leaves on the tree, lit up by a bright flash. However, the background is in shadow. This provides an unusual focus to the photo. This picture also reminded me of a Magritte painting, The Blank Page. Magritte was a painter known for his surrealistic work.

Photo by Peter Charney

I think this is a great image to represent “surreal” because it is difficult to tell what this is a picture of. There is a collage of different colors and lights in bubbles that appear to be in mid air. Overall, it is a very disorienting image.